Friday, December 30, 2016

Cyril deGrasse Tyson

In July of 1964,
while serving as a rabbi of Newark, New Jersey’s last remaining large Jewish congregation,
I helped found The United Community Corporation.It was the first community action agency
funded by Lyndon Johnson’s Equal Opportunity Act. The War on Poverty had come to the city where
I had grown up and had watched succumb to debilitating white flight.In July of 1967 the central ward of the city
would be decimated by riot.The UCC had been an effort to turn things around.The corrupt
Mayor – he would later go to jail – and City Council thought it would be their
self-serving tool. The structure of the federal
law and funding obviated their plans.The UCC was an independent entity, subject to the community and run by a
board of which I was a vice president.Its
president was the remarkable C. Willard Heckel, Dean of the Rutgers Law School,
later to become national moderator (president) of the Presbyterian Church.Our first task was to find and hire an
executive director.That brought me
together with Cyril deGrasse Tyson who came to us from the early anti-poverty
effort HARYOU. We all called him Ty.

Cyril deGrasse Tyson

Ty came into
Newark as in a whirlwind, a force of nature grounded in pragmatic idealism with
an unshakable moral core.We became
instant like-minded warriors and friends.Our time in Newark came to an end; the friendship endured.Ty died yesterday in upstate New York.2016 was what Queen Elizabeth would rightly describe
as an Annus Horribilis, a horrible year.A host of notables, people who accomplished important things, left us,
many in its closing days.Ty was one of
them.After Newark he would serve, among
others, in John Lindsay’s administration as Commissioner of Manpower and Career
Development.His resume was impressive,
but wherever and however he served professionally, Ty was a visionary.That’s what set him apart.He could see what could be and then worked
determinedly to make it happen.He
was committed to the idea of “power to the people” not as an abstract but as an
attainable reality.

One might
say that the devastating riot in Newark was a repudiation of everything that
the UCC and Ty had done in the years before. He documented the story of the agency's formative years in
his comprehensive volume, 2 Years Before the Riot. In fact, the city’s decades long history of
municipal corruption combined with the combustible frustration of an African
American community that had long been rendered powerless is what lit the
match.Ty’s work and his relentless
commitment to empowerment of the people had an immediate and lasting transformative
impact. The UCC was the first time that the
Black majority was put in control of publically funded programs. That could not have happened, certainly not
with such intentionality, without Ty.It
was a transfer of power that would be the harbinger for the city’s future.Ken Gibson, one of my fellow vice presidents,
would become the city’s first African American mayor. In a real sense, former mayor and now Senator Corey
Booker owes his opportunity to the groundwork Ty laid in the 1960s.

Cyril
deGrasse Tyson was an intense human being with a razor sharp mind, always churning, always on the move.Before
anyone else, he saw the empowering potential of computer technology for
community action agencies, documented in his book, The Unconditional War on
Poverty.He didn’t just encounter
life but analyzed it to the core, transmitting his insightful conclusions to
all who would listen.He had a passion and urgency about ideas that never diminished.The
last time we were together in the home he shared with family a few years back, I was
struck by how that passion and intensity was undiminished – Ty, almost
like a kid who had just made a new discovery, was ever the force of
nature.Those who knew him and, like
myself, called him dear friend were warmed by that glow.

I have
always felt that the real and underlying quality of public figures, of whom Ty was
certainly one, is best seen in what they are about at home not in the
office.Ty’s lifelong love and equal
partner, a woman of grace and supreme intelligence, Sunchita (whom we call Toni) is at
its core.They have made the incredible
journey together and parented three remarkable accomplished children: Stephen,
Neil and Lynn.When Ty and I first met
they were all youngsters.They are now
contributors to society, something most assuredly facilitated by supportive and
inspirational parents.Ty is no longer
with us physically, but he will always be a larger than life, yes
transformative, part of mine.We are all
better for having crossed and dwelled in his path, for having had him touch our
lives.

1 comment:

What a wonderful, heartfelt and vivid testimonial to my beloved, dearly departed uncle by someone who clearly knew him well. Thank you.My name is Gontran deGrasse Fortuné (known as Gerry) and I am Ty's nephew and godson. Your depiction brought back cherished memories of mine with him. I'm so glad that his legacy had such a positive impact on you as well, Mr. Prinz. God bless you! Peace.

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About Me

A branding consultant with decades of experience working with large global clients and brands, he now serves primarily young startup companies. Beginning his professional life as a rabbi of a large urban congregation, he has watched the numbers of the religiously unaffiliated grow in the years since leaving the pulpit. His book, Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars (available on Amazon) considers this phenomenon. Beyond his consulting practice Prinz spends much of his time writing, including this Blog. He posts to "Beyond All That" only when there is something to say that might add value to the conversation.